


in ten years (our adolescent heartache won't mean a thing)

by albypotter



Category: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: Angst, M/M, sorry i can only write angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-12-07 18:44:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20980619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/albypotter/pseuds/albypotter
Summary: Scorpius goes home for Christmas in fourth year, and doesn't come back. Six years later, Albus runs into a stranger with the same hazel eyes he's been dreaming about.





	in ten years (our adolescent heartache won't mean a thing)

**Author's Note:**

> this started out as something for the Hogwarts Online prompt "Is that my shirt?" but it got way longer than it was supposed to oops  
title from the musical by bears in trees

Scorpius leaves. He goes home for Christmas in their fourth year, and doesn't come back. _Dad says it's too dangerous_, his last letter says. _He says Hogwarts isn't right for me_. And maybe that's true. He doesn't tell Albus where he's gone, and he doesn't return his owls. Eventually, the letters start coming back unopened. Scorpius clearly doesn't want to be friends any more, and it makes sense, in a way. Albus reminds him of the darkest times of his life, of unimaginable pain, of losing everything. 

It's not hard for Albus to pretend that he doesn't care. He loses himself in schoolwork, for the first time - it turns out that Potions can be interesting, occasionally, and he enjoys Arithmancy too, although he only chose it because it was the only class that neither of his parents took, so his teachers had no expectations. Without Scorpius around to counter Albus's self-hatred, the comparisons to his father are harder to bear than ever before. He might have saved the world, but his peers don't see it that way. He's still a disappointment, the Slytherin Squib, Harry Potter's sorry excuse for a son. He's always been lonely, but now he's _lonelier_. His last three years at Hogwarts pass him by; he's not an active participant in his life, he just watches it happen. He gets decent grades. He joins a potions company as a lab assistant after graduation. They don't take him on academic merit, but on the merit of his name, and he hates it, but he needs the job. It pays well.

He moves out of his family's house to a town in the country, and finally, _finally_ he's truly alone. His parents were smothering him, his siblings were suffocating him, and now that he's by himself, he feels free. Like he can breathe again. But it gets lonely. There's no one else his age at work, and the other lab assistants don't talk much anyway. Albus is twenty one years old, and on paper, he's succeeding. But it feels empty without _him_. Without a friend to share it all with. 

Rose arrives in his fireplace, unannounced, on an oppressively warm evening in June. Albus is wearing old Quidditch shorts and lazing about shirtless by the open window. 

"Get up," she says, and it's undoubtedly an order rather than a request. "We're going out."

"What? Why?"

Rose throws up her hands in frustration. "Because, Albus, you've been _moping around_ for the last six years, and we've all had enough of it. We're going out, now, and we're going to have fun. Go and get dressed."

Albus scowls. "My parents put you up to this?"

"They didn't, actually. It was Lily." There's a tinge of sheepishness, like maybe Rose wasn't supposed to tell him that yet, but it's out in the open now.

"Lily? Why?" 

Rose clenches her hands into fists and makes a despairing noise. "Because she misses you, and it was her birthday last week, and we're going out for a drink, all of us cousins. Now, for the last time, _get up and put a shirt on_."

So he doesn't have a choice, really. Rose takes a seat at the table in his tiny kitchen to wait as he wanders into his bedroom to find a shirt. It doesn't matter what he wears, not really, because he knows he's going to excuse himself as soon as he can and just come back home. It's not that he doesn't like his cousins - none of his family have ever treated him badly, exactly, but when he's around them he can feel his _otherness_. If he wasn't the spitting image of his father, he would think he was adopted. He's just... different, somehow, though he’s never been able to put it into words. Albus opens a drawer and pulls a shirt out almost at random. It's Slytherin green, soft, with a pattern faded by time, and as he pulls it on it the scent reminds him strangely of _something_, but he can't put his finger on what, exactly. It's a distant memory of Hogwarts, maybe. Rose shouts at him from the next room to change his shorts, too, and the moment of nostalgia passes as quickly as it arrived.

Lily, freshly nineteen, takes them to an underground Muggle bar in Camden. A strange choice, but Albus thinks he might prefer it to a wizarding location. His mother always said that people stare when his father is with Ron and Hermione, and now the same is true of all their children. Apparently, witches and wizards just can't resist a glance at the kids of the people who saved the world. Their group crams into a booth too small for them, and it would be uncomfortably tight, except that Albus ends up perched on the end of a curved bench with no one on the other side of him. On the edge, like he always is. James slaps him a little too hard on the back when he comes back with a wobbling, precarious tray of drinks, and hands him a glass full of something golden and bitter. Albus downs half of it in one.

"Don’t look so down, Al," James chides, elbowing Albus in the ribs as he slides into the chair he’s stolen from another table. "We’re celebrating! Happy birthday, Lils!" He raises a glass, and a few drops of his drink splashes out onto Albus’s shirt. His playful demeanour is entirely at odds with Albus’s mood, and Albus tries very hard not to be angry about it. He only half-succeeds. 

Albus begins to wonder whether maybe it’s his own fault that he’s so isolated. His cousins try to include him in the conversation, ask him questions, listen intently as he tells them a bit about his work, but they have inside jokes and knowing glances that they could only have developed through years of this kind of talk. Years which Albus spent alone. Maybe Rose is right, and he should stop moping. It’s time to move on from Scorpius. 

But as soon as the thought enters his mind, he can’t let it go. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s on his fourth drink of the night - he still doesn’t know what’s in them, but people keep handing him glasses and it’s rude to refuse - but those soft hazel eyes from years ago are haunting him. Albus realises that he doesn’t even properly remember what Scorpius looks like any more, because he hated photos, didn’t even like Albus drawing him, but his eyes are the one thing that Albus will never forget. He could look completely different now, Albus thinks, but he’s sure he would recognise Scorpius if they crossed paths again. Every time he blinks, he gets a glimpse of perfect hazel, and it’s making it hard to focus. Albus just wants to close his eyes and lose himself in old, scarred memories. 

It’s time to go home, he decides. It’s time to be alone with his thoughts, like he always is. He lasted longer at the bar than he expected to, so hopefully Rose won’t bother him to go out again for a while. Albus wobbles a little as he gets to his feet, and the world tilts sideways for a moment. No Apparating home, then. He says his goodbyes and heads for the train station. He shares a little of his grandfather’s interest in Muggle artefacts, and he can appreciate the Tube for the impressive invention that it is. Especially now that it’s what’s going to get him to the Leaky Cauldron, so he can take the Floo network home. 

It’s late, but this is the centre of London, so it’s still busy and bustling as Albus tries to remember the way from the station to the pub. He’s lost in thought, watching his feet to make sure they’re moving in mostly a straight line, when he hears a voice call out to someone right in front of him, and he’s not coordinated enough to stop in time. 

"I’ll see you next - oh." 

Albus looks up into soft hazel eyes. It’s funny, how similar they are to the ones he’s been thinking about all night. 

"Sorry," he mumbles, and steps aside to let the stranger pass, but the man reaches out to grab his arm. 

"Albus?" 

A sweet, melodic voice. White-blond hair. And those same hazel eyes he's been dreaming about. 

He knows it can’t be. But maybe it is, anyway. 

"Hi," Albus says, and it feels painfully inadequate to just say _hi_ to the person he’s been missing for the last six years with the same intensity with which he would miss his limbs if they were removed, but really, what else can he say?

"Merlin," Scorpius breathes. "It’s really you, Albus." 

"No," Albus says, out of a strange drunken urge to be contrary. He’s still not convinced this is real. "Well, yes, I’m me, but you’re not you. You can’t be." 

"What do you mean, I can’t be? Albus, are you drunk?" 

"Maybe," Albus says around a smile, "or maybe I’m dreaming. Either way, you’re not real, so I’m going home." 

He tries to leave, but the stranger with Scorpius’s face won’t let him go. "Albus, please." 

"What?" Albus asks, suddenly angry. "What are you doing here?" 

"In London? I was on a date," Scorpius says, and of course he would choose to misunderstand the question. He glances over his shoulder, but there's no one there. "He was just offering to walk me home when you showed up." He looks Albus over, and frowns. "_Is that my shirt_?" 

Albus feels himself blush as the memory comes back like a flood. He had stayed at Hogwarts for Christmas of their fourth year, expecting Scorpius to stay too, but he ended up alone. On Christmas eve, he had ‘borrowed’ the shirt from Scorpius’s trunk. He had every intention of giving it back before Scorpius noticed, but the next week, all of Scorpius’s possessions vanished from the dorm. Well, almost everything. 

"Maybe," Albus says. "Sorry. You can have it back, if you want." 

Scorpius laughs, and it's warm and genuine, and it reminds Albus of how they used to be. He used to love Scorpius's laugh, and he loved being the only person that could make him light up like that.

"I don't need it back, Albus. Keep it."

They watch each other in silence, for a moment that stretches just long enough to be uncomfortable. Albus can't come up with anything to say other than asking Scorpius to come back to his place with him, which would be ridiculous, but at the same time he doesn't want to just leave.

"Come on, I'll take you home," Scorpius says, and Albus is suddenly terrified that Scorpius has developed Legilimency. There are some ideas in his mind right now that Scorpius _definitely_ shouldn't be seeing. "Don't want you running into anyone else while you're not looking where you're going." It sounds mean, Albus thinks, but Scorpius is smiling, so it's okay.

They head towards the Leaky Cauldron. Albus is relieved to know he was aiming in the right direction when he left the station, because as it turns out, Diagon Alley is just around the corner. There's someone watching them as they push through the crowd in the pub towards the fireplace, and Scorpius swears under his breath when he notices. "Sorry," he says to the man, who's looking at them with something like disdain. "I know I said I was going home, but. Um. I ran into an old friend." 

His date, then. He's tall, almost as tall as Scorpius, with dark hair and piercing green eyes. Albus squashes his jealousy down and takes a handful of Floo powder from the open jar on the mantelpiece. He looks back at Scorpius before he drops it into the fire, and Scorpius nods. 

"I'll follow," he says, a reassurance that Albus appreciates. He speaks his address loud enough for Scorpius to hear, and steps into the spitting green flames. He doesn't use the Floo network often, especially not in public places, and it's a lot tighter than he remembers it being. When he falls out at the other end, it's all he can do not to vomit all over the rug by the fireplace. Scorpius appears a minute later, and Albus is still doubled over on the floor.

"Merlin’s beard, Albus, are you alright?" he asks. Albus gives a weak thumbs up, not quite trusting himself to speak yet. 

"Haven't done that for a while," he manages eventually, and looks up to see that Scorpius has sat down cross-legged on the floor next to him. "I suppose I had a few too many." Now that he's home, it's like everything has hit him at once. He's strangely exhausted from being surrounded by people all night, even though it's not all that late, and his mouth tastes like he's swallowed a barrel full of sawdust. Scorpius is watching him with a concerned expression.

"Thanks for making sure I got back here," Albus says, trying very hard to look him in the eyes without spontaneously bursting into flame, "but honestly, I'm exhausted. I'm just going to go to bed." He's shaky as he gets to his feet. Scorpius doesn't move, just watches him from the floor as Albus crosses to the door to his room.

"Goodnight, Albus," Scorpius calls after him, and suddenly it feels like old times, like a shared dorm in Hogwarts, like sleepovers at Albus's parents' house when they were young. 

"G'night," Albus says, but he doesn't look back. Brushing his teeth seems like an enormous effort, so he just slips into bed and lets his dreams take him. 

* * *

Albus wakes to the smell of toast wafting in from the next room. He rubs the sleep from his eyes and goes to investigate, wand drawn, because last time he checked, he lived alone. But it’s Scorpius in the kitchen, searching through the cupboards. He turns around when Albus clears his throat loudly. 

"Good morning," he says, soft, smiling. "I hope you don't mind, but I made breakfast."

"You stayed here overnight?" Albus asks, shoving his wand into the waistband of his pants, and Scorpius’s cheeks flush red. He’s beautiful. His hair is longer now than it ever was, choppy, reaching just past his jaw, and it suits him well. Albus watches, mesmerised, as Scorpius twirls a shiny white-blond strand around his finger. There’s a fire burning low in his stomach, and he's suddenly glad for his loose pyjama pants.

"I don’t know why. Well, I do. You really were quite drunk last night, and I didn’t want..." Scorpius chews on his lower lip for a moment, and Albus wonders whether he’s trying to drive him crazy on purpose. "I didn’t want you to forget you’d seen me. You kept talking about how I wasn’t real." 

"And are you?"

"Yes. Albus, obviously I’m real. Look." He holds out a hand, and Albus links their fingers together and doesn’t let go. He doesn’t think he’ll ever let go. 

"_Fuck_," Albus says, under his breath, but he knows Scorpius will hear him anyway. He's so close, Albus wants to map the tiny freckles that have blossomed over his skin since they last saw each other. 

"Where did you go? When you disappeared?" 

Scorpius sighs, and hands Albus one of two mugs that are on the counter. Albus has to let go of his hand so Scorpius can drink his own coffee, and it almost feels like being separated again, even though Scorpius is still right here. He watches Scorpius bring the mug up to his face and inhale deeply, just like he used to. He’s sure, without even tasting it, that his own will be made the way he likes it, with soy milk and three sugars. Scorpius is thoughtful in that way. 

"Australia," he says, which explains the freckles and the gorgeous golden tint to his skin. "After what happened, and... after mum died, dad wanted a fresh start. So we moved out to a little town on the other side of the world, where no one could possibly know us. But I missed London, and the community here, so I came back a little while ago. I missed _you_, Albus." 

"You could have written to me, then." 

Scorpius frowns, and he gets the same little dent above his right eyebrow that he used to have when he would make that face. "You heard the part where I said I moved to Australia? No owl will fly that far." 

"There are other ways. There are other things, Scorpius. You could have-"

"No, I couldn’t," Scorpius interrupts him, and it’s new and bold like he never was before. "I thought I’d never see you again. It seemed easier to just not think about you at all. No matter how much I missed you." 

"If you missed me that much, you would've written. Or visited. Given me _something_, at least." Albus doesn't understand, much as he wants to. If their roles were reversed, surely he would have stayed in touch. Or even more than that. Scorpius being here, right now, has dragged Albus back through the years to when they were best friends, to when he was quietly, secretly in love with his best friend, and he thinks he probably would have run away from his family forever if it meant he could be near Scorpius. The only person who's ever really _seen_ him. 

Scorpius sighs as he sets his mug down, and takes Albus's away too. He links their hands together again, tangling their fingers and pulling Albus a few steps towards him, and Albus's heart stutters.

"I'm sorry, Albus," Scorpius says, and his voice is quiet and intense and it sends chills down Albus's spine even in the warmth of the morning sunlight that's filtering through the windows. "I'm sorry, I really am. I didn't mean to hurt you. Honestly, I didn't think you would mind much. You were always so..." Albus watches him just breathe for a few moments, and there's a tingle of electricity and anticipation in the air. He doesn't know what's coming, but he knows he wants it. He wants whatever Scorpius is willing to give him. "You were always wonderful, Albus, loyal and determined and so relentlessly _kind_. And I know you didn't get on with your family, but I was sure you'd find someone else who would see you for who you are, and then you wouldn't need me anymore. I didn't want to just fade. I hoped a clean break would be easier for us. For you."

"But..." Albus starts, then realises he doesn't know what to ask. There's something else, he's sure of it, something that will thread all these broken pieces together and then maybe he'll finally understand what Scorpius is telling him. "Never mind me, what about you? Didn't you want to stay friends? Or was I so insignificant that you could just forget me like that?"

"No," Scorpius says, and it's immense. It fills the room. "No, I didn't want to forget you. I just wanted to forget that I was in love with you." 

Albus notices distantly that he's strangely calm in the light of this confession. Most likely because there's no way it can be real. He probably fell onto the train tracks last night, and this is all an elaborate deathbed dream. Somehow, that thought doesn't bother him, either.

"What," he says, flat. "No, you weren't. You can't have been." 

"I was, Albus. I am. That's why I didn't reach out, even after I came back to London. I didn't think I could see you again without doing something stupid, like telling you I'm in love with you." He half-laughs, and his eyes shine with tears. "Almost seven years apart, and I still love you."

Albus can't process this. He just stares in disbelief.

"You don't have to - I'm not expecting anything from you, Albus. I'll leave now, if you ask me to, and you don't have to see me ever again. But I'd like to be friends."

"We could be friends," Albus says slowly. "Or you could kiss me right now."

"I could - _what_?"

Albus takes another step closer, so close that their breath mixes in the small space between them and he can see every beautiful feature of Scorpius's face in perfect detail. Albus has kissed boys before, and girls too, but those were drunken, meaningless fumbles in clubs and on the streets, and this is nothing like that. This is what he's been consumed by for years. "Kiss me," he says again.

Scorpius lets go of his hands to reach up and brush Albus's cheek with his thumb. "Al..." he breathes, and normally Albus would recoil at the awful connotations that the nickname has, but right now he doesn't think he could move away from Scorpius even if he wanted to. 

"Please," he murmurs, reaching up so that their mouths are as close as they could possibly be without touching. Their noses bump against each other as Scorpius moves to brush their lips together, and it's gentle and sweet and really not at all what Albus wants right now. He slips his arms around Scorpius's waist, pulling him closer so that their bodies are pressed together from chest to thigh, and pushes up on his tiptoes to kiss Scorpius properly, deeply. Scorpius moans a little into his mouth at the force of Albus's kiss, and Albus knows that he'll never tire of that sound. He wants to be able to make Scorpius make that sound for him over and over, for the rest of their lives. He wants to spend the rest of his life kissing Scorpius. They won't need to come up for air, they won't ever need anything but each other. Scorpius smiles against Albus's mouth, pulls back a little, and Albus chases his lips until they're kissing again. 

"Albus," Scorpius says, finally. "Albus. What is this?"

"What do you mean?" Is that a joke? What could this possibly be other than what it so clearly is? "It's _us_. It's us like we should have been years ago."

"Years ago," Scorpius repeats. "Years?"

"Yes," Albus breathes, not wanting to be away from Scorpius's lips for any longer than he has to be to have this pointless conversation. "Years, I've loved you for years, Scorpius. Since the time in third year when you hexed those Gryffindors in the corridor for calling me names."

"I had detention for a month," Scorpius laughs, and kisses Albus again, softly, quickly. "Worth it, though, for defending your honour." 

It's strange to think about, how _young_ they were back then. Albus has never thought of himself as innocent or naive, but looking back, he realises that he must have been. There's a lot of things he would do differently now, but Scorpius is the one constant, glowing bright through every dark memory. 

Albus reaches up to tuck a loose strand of Scorpius's hair behind his ear. "This looks good on you," he says, and Scorpius grins.

"Thanks," he says. "I wasn't sure, but dad said that it's a Malfoy family tradition, and I really like it now."

Albus grimaces at the thought of Scorpius becoming a clone of his father. He's seen pictures, and every generation of Malfoy men looks almost identical. Scorpius has his mother's eyes, though. Eyes that are boring into him right now, with a mischievous fire behind them.

"What?" Albus asks. 

"Oh, nothing," Scorpius says, all fake-casual and charming. "I was just thinking, well... I don't have anything to do today, and we're here all alone in your apartment..."

Albus catches on quick, and drags Scorpius away from the kitchen and their uneaten breakfast, back to his bedroom. He silently thanks the stars that he was able to afford a double bed when he moved in, because they barely fitted onto a single bed together when they were in school, and they've both grown since then. Well, Scorpius has, anyway. Albus can look freely now, and he's able to appreciate how Scorpius has filled out from the scrawny teenager he was into a slim, willowy figure. 

"You're still wearing my shirt," Scorpius observes with a smirk, from where he's spread out over the crumpled bed sheets. Albus pulls it over his head, balls it up and aims at Scorpius's head, and misses. 

"It's mine now, anyway," Albus teases as he moves over to lie next to Scorpius, pulling him in for another kiss.

It's a Sunday, so Albus doesn't have to go to work, and they spend the whole day in bed together. Mostly making out, but Albus wants to talk, too, desperate to know what Scorpius has been doing since they parted. Scorpius moved back from Australia a few months ago, and works for the Ministry now, Albus learns, as a librarian in the archives for the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. It's not what he would have expected Scorpius to choose as a career, but the more he thinks about it, the more it makes sense. He did always love reading. It's odd to realise how much he remembers about Scorpius from before. Albus thought he had done a good job of wiping his memory of the thousands of innocent, useless facts about Scorpius over the last six-odd years, but now that his best friend is back with him it's like a hidden floodgate has opened up in his brain. Maybe they have only come back now that he has a use for them.

They're both reluctant to get up, but as the morning fades into afternoon, then early evening, Albus realises that he hasn't eaten since yesterday. He orders them delivery from a Muggle restaurant he likes, and it's disappointing when after they've eaten Scorpius tells him that he has to go home. 

"Sorry, Albus," he says, gathering his belongings back up. "I'll see you soon, though, I hope?"

Albus kisses him once more before he goes. It's hard to let go of him again, but this time he knows Scorpius will be back. 

"Just don't leave it another six years this time."

**Author's Note:**

> come yell about scorbus with me @ wesninska on tumblr :)


End file.
